AT&T Park

Baseball and the Bay Area go together like sour and dough. Joe DiMaggio was the first person to say that, I believe.

Or maybe it was Rickey Henderson. Or Charlie Brown. Doesn’t matter, really. All three men were horsehide immortals with ties to our glorious region of gloves and bats and garlic fries.

Muni Stadium, home of the San Jose Giants

(All right, so Charlie was a cartoon character. But his owner and general manager, Charles Schulz, lived in Santa Rosa.)

I will argue this point with anyone: Northern California is one of the best baseball places on earth. The weather is divine for the sport. Kids still (SET ITALICS) play (END ITALICS) the game in fairly large numbers, not always true elsewhere. DiMaggio and Henderson are just two of the Hall of Famers that grew up in these parts.

Never forget, as well, that we live in one of only five metro-opolis-plexes that possesses two Major League teams. The other three are New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington-Baltimore.

And none of those places have a McCovey Cove! Or a tarp!

Sometimes, I think we are a little too cool about all if this and fail to appreciate our surroundings as deeply as we should. It occurred to me, with the new season nigh, that someone should catalog all of the experiences that can make a baseball spring—and summer and autumn—such a sublime experience around here. So I wrote my name in the leadoff spot to make that list.

No one should be considered a true Bay Area baseball fan unless he or she has checked off every one of the following to-do items. And since you have read this far, I presume that you are a Bay Area baseball fan.

Was it strange to you? It was strange to me. The Sharks’ schedule was released the other day without the National Hockey League designating if or where the team might be playing host to one of the league’s signature outdoor games.

Word has been out for a while that the Sharks were likely to play a home game al fresco this season. John Tortora, the team’s chief operating officer, began investigating the possibilities when he assumed that job a year ago. When the Kings-Ducks game at Dodger Stadium was such a success in Los Angeles last season, Tortora began pushing the league to consider the Bay Area with more enthusiasm. The NHL outdoor games in their current incarnation have been a huge success since the first “Winter Classic” in 2008 at the Buffalo Bills’ stadium. Since then, 11 more outdoor games have been played in such iconic structures as Fenway Park, Wrigley Field and the University of Michigan Stadium.

And from what I hear, it’s supposed to happen here next winter . . . .somewhere. There are just a lot of details to work out. So what’s the holdup? Here are the issues at hand, as gleaned after discussions from various sources, plus my non-solicited opinion on each:

ISSUE ONE: Can the Bay Area handle such an event, which could bring thousands of out-of-town fans to the game as well as local ticket-holders?

OPINION: Of course it could. The Bay Area has staged several baseball All-Star games, a Super Bowl, multiple World Series and a NHL All-Star game. The infrastructure is in place and so are the hotel rooms.

ISSUE TWO: Does the game make financial sense for the Sharks and the NHL?

OPINION: For the Sharks, absolutely. For the league, you’d think so. The contractural structure of the outdoor games — for both the Winter Classics on New Year’s Day or the Stadium Series contests last year in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York — is unique. The NHL basically buys the host team out of a home game, paying it the equivalent of a sold-out gate. Then the league takes over the entire show, paying the expenses to stage the game but also keeping the entire proceeds from tickets and telecasts and merchandising, etc. A portion of that revenue is then divided among all NHL teams. It means that before committing to an outdoors game in Northern California, the projected P+L sheet will pencil out to the positive. Because if the game is a flop, the NHL takes the red-ink bath, not the Sharks. And it’s quite an involved process to build out one of these games, as exemplified in this video of the Wrigley Field ice rink conversion .